Lenovo Vibe K4 Note First Impressions: A budget smartphone with interesting features

A lot of teasers were being posted and buzz was created ahead of the launch of the Lenovo Vibe K4 Note smartphone, which finally got unveiled on January 5 in India. The K4 Note is the successor to Lenovo's Vibe K3 Note smartphone that got pretty popular for its design, specs as well as aggressive pricing.

The K3 Note is not even a year old, and Lenovo thought of giving consumers an upgraded version of the phone in order to encash on its predecessor's popularity and keep the bells ringing for its Note series. The Vibe K4 Note has been promoted as a Killer smartphone, and does bring features that look interesting and promising, however its fate depends on its performance.

Speaking of features and specs, the Lenovo K4 Note does not have significant upgrades in specifications, but as the company puts it, the phone is more about features and user-experience than just about specifications. Moreover, Lenovo is trying to spice up the user-experience by adding VR headset compatibility to this device.

Lenovo is eyeing a higher traction for the K4 Note in India, considering that the phone has been announced only in India, as of now, and comes with Indian-consumer centric features.

We got to test the Lenovo K4 Note smartphone for a brief time at its launch event in Delhi, and here is how we felt about it during this hands-on:

Design and Display

The Lenovo Vibe K4 Note looks pretty nice due to some noticeable changes in its design language. Lenovo K4 Note has a curved back panel design, with features metallic rim defining its sides. Unlike the K3 Note, the K4 Note gets a removable panel that can be taken off to put in dual SIM cards and a microSD card. Weighing in at 158 grams, it is quite light on hand. The slight curve on back panel adds to the looks as well as makes it pretty comfortable to be used single handedly. The phone thinnest edge is 3.8mm and thickest part measures in at 9.1mm. Over all it looks much better than the K3 Note.

On the left of the phone, you get volume key and power key. Long pressing the power key launches a window to access VR option.

The front adorns a 5.5-inch Full HD IPS display with 1920x1080pixels resolution giving way to a pixel density of 441PPI. It has Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection. The display reproduces colours well and has good viewing angles. Its touch interface works smoothly.

Processor:

In the hardware department, Lenovo Vibe K4 Note features a 64-bit MediaTek MT6753 Octa-Core Processor with a Mali T720-MP3 GPU with 450MHz 3D graphics accelerator. The chipset is supported with 3GB of RAM, which as per the company is good enough for a smooth performance of the device. It has an internal storage of 16GB eMMC, which can be expanded by up to 128GB via microSD.

Camera:

The phone features a 13MP rear camera with PDAF, f/2.2 and a Dual-color LED flash, and a 5MP front facing Selfie camera. The ambient lighting condition of the hall was not apt to test the camera and form an opinion about it. We will give you details about the camera performance in our review of the K4 Note.

The key highlight of the K4 Note is that it comes with VR headset and run supporting software. The K4 Note features TheaterMax VR software, a VR technology from Lenovo, which converts any multimedia content like movies, games and online content into a virtual reality based cinematic experience.

Software:

Lenovo K4 Note runs on Android 5.1 Lollipop wrapped under the company's Vibe UI, which runs on the company's higher range smartphones. The UI looks familiar, and worked smoothly during the brief test.

Conclusion:

The Lenovo K4 Note is not exactly in to specification war, as also said by the company, but it still gets an edge over competitors due to its additional features like VR Headset and software support, fingerprint scanner, Dolby surround sound, and more. The company has worked on its design to give it premium looks and feel. Overall, the phone looks promising but it will be facing tough competition from the likes of Micromax Canvas 5 and the upcoming Xiaomi Redmi3 smartphone.

Lenovo Vibe K4 Note has been priced for Rs 11,999 without VR headset, where as the VR Bundled variant is sold for Rs. 12,499. The VR headset will also be sold separately for Rs 1,299. It will be retailing exclusively on Amazon.in.